By Michael Wheeler
SACRAMENTO—Judge Kara Ueda heard a seemingly technical matter with real life consequences in Sacramento Superior Court’s Dept. 45 Tuesday: did California AB 3234 allow defendants accused of misdemeanor DUI to be placed into diversion programs by a judge?
Defense attorney John Campanella, representing Alicia Flores, Chris Forsberg, Michael Quigley and Herbert Wagner, thought so.
But Deputy District Attorney Simone Leighty disagreed. Both referenced legal precedent in support of their arguments, and Judge Ueda was not ready to issue a ruling at the end of the hearing.
Up for debate were the implications of AB 3234, recently enacted in Sept. 2020. Under its provisions, judges would be able to place defendants accused of misdemeanor crimes in diversion programs over the objections of prosecutors. 
A handful of exceptions exist, and Campanella believed that DUI was not one of them, according to the legislative intent.
“Each statute’s legislative history must be interpreted based on its own unique set of facts and history. Therefore, the facts that the court have found, a legislative intent to have a vehicle section 23640 exclude defendants from diversion in other diversionary schemes does not necessarily mean that the legislature intended that vehicle code 23640 also excludes DUI defendants from section 1001.95. Very simply, different statutes have different legislative histories and intents,” he argued.
According to Campanella’s analysis of the floor debates that took place in the California Senate and Assembly, AB 3234 had no statutory requirements for participation other than a limited few exceptions specified in another California statute.
Furthermore, during floor debates, he said, the legislature failed to mention any exclusions to the law, nor did it make any reference to other code which did exclude certain offenders from misdemeanor diversionary programs.
“It simply cannot be said that the legislature intended for Vehicle Code section 23640 to exclude DUIs from this new broader diversion scheme. Instead, the legislative history demonstrates an intent for those charged with misdemeanor DUIs to be eligible for diversion,” the defense counsel reasoned.
Other laws had previously explicitly excluded people charged with misdemeanor DUI from diversionary programs, he said. Thus, the failure of the legislature to make any reference to an intent to exclude them from diversion in the new law was a good indicator that no such exclusion was necessary.
“If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, looks like a duck, it’s a duck,” Campanella said.
Deputy DA Leighty disagreed with Campanella, citing multiple instances of case law supporting the argument that misdemeanor DUI did not have to be explicitly excluded by the legislature in order for it to be.
The comments of Campanella, she argued, were not sufficient to indicate that the legislature intended for DUIs to be included in diversion programs.
Campanella objected to Leighty’s reference to rulings issued by superior court judges, expressing his view that only the judgments of appellate courts were of relevance to the situation.
Judge Ueda did not indicate which way she would eventually rule. She requested Campanella to submit additional information regarding a portion of his argument that she had not received by Thursday, and a date for further argument of the issue was set for May.
Michael Wheeler is a junior at UC Davis, where he studies History and Economics. He is from Walnut Creek, California.
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